I once sat in the passenger seat of a car driving from Sydney to Canberra one night and watched the driver demolish two bags of Jack Link’s BBQ beef jerky before we even got to Goulburn. An hour out of Canberra, we made a pitstop at a Caltex where he was disappointed to find that they only had bags of teriyaki beef jerky left. He bought two anyway and they were empty by Queanbeyan.
It’s easy to snigger at the word ‘handcrafted’ on The Darling Jerky Co’s labels, but when word association immediately links ‘jerky’ to ‘service station’, you’ve gotta work a little harder to let people know that your product is something special. Desperate measures have to be taken, and we should be glad that the word ‘artisinal’ doesn’t feature on the label as well.
Beneath the label are thick meaty chunks of flavour country, dehydrated bars that rehydrate after a few chews, releasing one of two flavours on offer: Original or Pickleburger. Original is a classic smokey flavour with the slight zing of lemon and habanero, Pickleburger tastes like a Macca’s cheeseburger turned into a Space Food Stick. Both are available by the quarter kilo, or together as a half kilo, which would easily last an entire Sydney to Canberra run.
Where
Available online
How much
$40 for a quarter kilo bag
